The Ring of Thoth

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

MR. JOHN VANSITTART SMITH, F.R.S., of 147A Gower Street, was
a man whose energy of purpose and clearness of thought might have
placed him in the very first rank of scientific observers. He was
the victim, however, of a universal ambition which prompted him to
aim at distinction in many subjects rather than pre-eminence in
one. In his early days he had shown aptitude for zoology and for
botany which caused his friends to look upon him as a second
Darwin, but when a professorship was almost within his reach he had
suddenly discontinued his studies and turned his whole attention to
chemistry. Here his researches upon the spectra of the metals had
won him his fellowship in the Royal Society; but again he played
the coquette with his subject, and after a year's absence from the
laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on
the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a
crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy of
his talents.

The most fickle of wooers, however, is apt to be caught at
last, and so it was with John Vansittart Smith. The more he
burrowed his way into Egyptology the more impressed he became by
the vast field which it opened to the inquirer, and by the extreme
importance of a subject which promised to throw a light upon the
first germs of human civilisation and the origin of the greater
part of our arts and sciences. So struck was Mr. Smith that he
straightway married an Egyptological young lady who had written
upon the sixth dynasty, and having thus secured a sound base of
operations he set himself to collect materials for a work which
should unite the research of Lepsius and the ingenuity of
Champollion. The preparation of his magnum opus entailed many
hurried visits to the magnificent Egyptian collections of the
Louvre, upon the last of which, no longer ago than the middle of
last October, he became involved in a most strange and noteworthy
adventure.

The trains had been slow and the Channel had been rough, so
that the student arrived in Paris in a somewhat befogged and
feverish condition. On reaching the Hotel de France, in the Rue
Laffitte, he had thrown himself upon a sofa for a couple of hours,
but finding that he was unable to sleep, he determined, in spite of
his fatigue, to make his way to the Louvre, settle the point which
he had come to decide, and take the evening train back to Dieppe.
Having come to his conclusion, he donned his greatcoat, for it was
a raw rainy day, and made his way across the Boulevard des Italiens
and down the Avenue de l'Opera. Once in the Louvre he was on
familiar ground, and he speedily made his way to the collection of
papyri which it was his intention to consult.

The warmest admirers of John Vansittart Smith could hardly
claim for him that he was a handsome man. His high-beaked nose and
prominent chin had something of the same acute and incisive
character which distinguished his intellect. He held his head in
a birdlike fashion, and birdlike, too, was the pecking motion with
which, in conversation, he threw out his objections and retorts.
As he stood, with the high collar of his greatcoat raised to his
ears, he might have seen from the reflection in the glass-case
before him that his appearance was a singular one. Yet it came
upon him as a sudden jar when an English voice behind him exclaimed
in very audible tones, "What a queer-looking mortal!"

The student had a large amount of petty vanity in his
composition which manifested itself by an ostentatious and overdone
disregard of all personal considerations. He straightened his lips
and looked rigidly at the roll of papyrus, while his heart filled
with bitterness against the whole race of travelling Britons.

"Yes," said another voice, "he really is an
extraordinary fellow."

"Do you know," said the first speaker, "one could
almost believe that by the continual contemplation of mummies the
chap has become half a mummy himself?"

He has certainly an Egyptian cast of countenance," said the
other.

John Vansittart Smith spun round upon his heel with the
intention of shaming his countrymen by a corrosive remark or two.
To his surprise and relief, the two young fellows who had been
conversing had their shoulders turned towards him, and were gazing
at one of the Louvre attendants who was polishing some brass-work
at the other side of the room.

"Carter will be waiting for us at the Palais Royal," said
one tourist to the other, glancing at his watch, and they clattered
away, leaving the student to his labours.

"I wonder what these chatterers call an Egyptian cast of
countenance," thought John Vansittart Smith, and he moved his
position slightly in order to catch a glimpse of the man's face.
He started as his eyes fell upon it. It was indeed the very face
with which his studies had made him familiar. The regular
statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded chin, and dusky
complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable statues,
mummy-cases, and pictures which adorned the walls of the apartment.
The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an Egyptian.
The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the hips
were alone sufficient to identify him.

John Vansittart Smith shuffled towards the attendant with some
intention of addressing him. He was not light of touch in
conversation, and found it difficult to strike the happy mean
between the brusqueness of the superior and the geniality of the
equal. As he came nearer, the man presented his side face to him,
but kept his gaze still bent upon his work. Vansittart Smith,
fixing his eyes upon the fellow's skin, was conscious of a sudden
impression that there was something inhuman and preternatural about
its appearance. Over the temple and cheek-bone it was as glazed
and as shiny as varnished parchment. There was no suggestion of
pores. One could not fancy a drop of moisture upon that arid
surface. From brow to chin, however, it was cross-hatched by a
million delicate wrinkles, which shot and interlaced as though
Nature in some Maori mood had tried how wild and intricate a
pattern she could devise.

"Ou est la collection de Memphis?" asked the student,
with the awkward air of a man who is devising a question merely for
the purpose of opening a conversation.

"C'est la," replied the man brusquely, nodding his head
at the other side of the room.

"Vous etes un Egyptien, n'est-ce pas?" asked the
Englishman.

The attendant looked up and turned his strange dark eyes upon
his questioner. They were vitreous, with a misty dry shininess,
such as Smith had never seen in a human head before. As he gazed
into them he saw some strong emotion gather in their depths, which
rose and deepened until it broke into a look of something akin both
to horror and to hatred.

"Non, monsieur; je suis francais." The man turned
abruptly and bent low over his polishing. The student gazed at him
for a moment in astonishment, one of the doors he proceeded to make
notes of his researches among the papyri. This thoughts, however
refused to return into their natural groove. They would run upon
the enigmatical attendant with the sphinx-like face and the
parchment skin.

"Where have I seen such eyes?" said Vansittart Smith to
himself. "There is something saurian about them, something
reptilian. There's the membrana nictitans of the snakes," he
mused, bethinking himself of his zoological studies. "It
gives a shiny effect. But there was something more here. There
was a sense of power, of wisdom - so I read them - and of
weariness, utter weariness, and ineffable despair. It may be all
imagination, but I never had so strong an impression. By Jove, I
must have another look at them!" He rose and paced round the
Egyptian rooms, but the man who had excited his curiosity had
disappeared.

The student sat down again in his quiet corner, and continued
to work at his notes. He had gained the information which he
required from the papyri, and it only remained to write it down
while it was still fresh in his memory. For a time his pencil
travelled rapidly over the paper, but soon the lines became less
level, the words more blurred, and finally the pencil tinkled down
upon the floor, and the head of the student dropped heavily forward
upon his chest. Tired out by his journey, he slept so soundly in
his lonely post behind the door that neither the clanking civil
guard, nor the footsteps of sightseers, nor even the loud hoarse
bell which gives the signal for closing, were sufficient to arouse
him.

Twilight deepened into darkness, the bustle from the Rue de
Rivoli waxed and then waned, distant Notre Dame clanged out the
hour of midnight, and still the dark and lonely figure sat silently
in the shadow. It was not until close upon one in the morning
that, with a sudden gasp and an intaking of the breath, Vansittart
Smith returned to consciousness. For a moment it flashed upon him
that he had dropped asleep in his studychair at home. The moon was
shining fitfully through the unshuttered window, however, and as
his eye ran along the lines of mummies and the endless array of
polished cases, he remembered clearly where he was and how he came
there. The student was not a nervous man. He possessed that love
of a novel situation which is peculiar to his race. Stretching out
his cramped limbs, he looked at his watch, and burst into a chuckle
as he observed the hour. The episode would make an admirable
anecdote to be introduced into his next paper as a relief to the
graver and heavier speculations. He was a little cold, but wide
awake and much refreshed. It was no wonder that the guardians had
overlooked him, for the door threw its heavy black shadow right
across him.

The complete silence was impressive. Neither outside nor
inside was there a creak or a murmur. He was alone with the dead
men of a dead civilisation. What though the outer city reeked of
the garish nineteenth century! In all this chamber there was
scarce an article, from the shrivelled ear of wheat to the
pigment-box of the painter, which had not held its own against four
thousand years. Here was the flotsam and jetsam washed up by the
great ocean of time from that far-off empire. From stately Thebes,
from lordly Luxor, from the great temples of Heliopolis, from a
hundred rifled tombs, these relics had been brought. The student
glanced around at the long-silent figures who flickered vaguely up
through the gloom, at the busy toilers who were now so restful, and
he fell into a reverent and thoughtful mood. An unwonted sense of
his own youth and insignificance came over him. Leaning back in
his chair, he gazed dreamily down the long vista of rooms, all
silvery with the moonshine, which extend through the whole wing of
the widespread building. His eyes fell upon the yellow glare of
a distant lamp.

John Vansittart Smith sat up on his chair with his nerves all
on edge. The light was advancing slowly towards him, pausing from
time to time, and then coming jerkily onwards. The bearer moved
noiselessly. In the utter silence there was no suspicion of the
pat of a footfall. An idea of robbers entered the Englishman's
head. He snuggled up farther into the corner. The light was two
rooms off. Now it was in the next chamber, and still there was no
sound. With something approaching to a thrill of fear the student
observed a face, floating in the air as it were, behind the flare
of the lamp. The figure was wrapped in shadow, but the light fell
full upon a strange, eager face. There was no mistaking the
metallic, glistening eyes and the cadaverous skin. It was the
attendant with whom he had conversed.

Vansittart Smith's first impulse was to come forward and
address him. A few words of explanation would set the matter
clear, and lead doubtless to his being conducted to some side-door
from which he might make his way to his hotel. As the man entered
the chamber, however, there was something so stealthy in his
movements, and so furtive in his expression, that the Englishman
altered his intention. This was clearly no ordinary official
walking the rounds. The fellow wore felt-soled slippers, stepped
with a rising chest, and glanced quickly from left to right, while
his hurried, gasping breathing thrilled the flame of his lamp.
Vansittart Smith crouched silently back into the corner and watched
him keenly, convinced that his errand was one of secret and
probably sinister import.

There was no hesitation in the other's movements. He stepped
lightly and swiftly across to one of the great cases, and, drawing
a key from his pocket, he unlocked it. From the upper shelf he
pulled down a mummy, which he bore away with him, and laid it with
much care and solicitude upon the ground. By it he placed his
lamp, and then squatting down beside it in Eastern fashion he began
with long, quivering fingers to undo the cerecloths and bandages
which girt it round. As the crackling rolls of linen peeled off
one after the other, a strong aromatic odour filled the chamber,
and fragments of scented wood and of spices pattered down upon the
marble floor.

It was clear to John Vansittart Smith that this mummy had
never been unswathed before. The operation interested him keenly.
He thrilled all over with curiosity, and his bird-like head
protruded farther and farther from behind the door. When, however,
the last roll had been removed from the four-thousand-year-old
head, it was all that he could do to stifle an outcry of amazement.
First, a cascade of long, black, glossy tresses poured over the
workman's hands and arms. A second turn of the bandage revealed a
low, white forehead, with a pair of delicately arched eyebrows. A
third uncovered a pair of bright, deeply fringed eyes, and a
straight, well-cut nose, while a fourth and last showed a sweet,
full, sensitive mouth, and a beautifully curved chin. The whole
face was one of extraordinary loveliness, save for the one blemish
that in the centre of the forehead there was a single irregular,
coffee-coloured splotch. It was a triumph of the embalmer's art.
Vansittart Smith's eyes grew larger and larger as he gazed upon it,
and he chirruped in his throat with satisfaction.

Its effect upon the Egyptologist was as nothing, however,
compared with that which it produced upon the strange attendant.
He threw his hands up into the air, burst into a harsh clatter of
words, and then, hurling himself down upon the ground beside the
mummy, he threw his arms round her, and kissed her repeatedly upon
the lips and brow. "Ma petite!" he groaned in French.
"Ma pauvre petite!" His voice broke with emotion, and
his innumerable wrinkles quivered and writhed, but the student
observed in the lamp-light that his shining eyes were still dry and
tearless as two beads of steel. For some minutes he lay, with a
twitching face, crooning and moaning over the beautiful head. Then
he broke into a sudden smile, said some words in an unknown tongue,
and sprang to his feet with the vigorous air of one who has braced
himself for an effort.

In the centre of the room there was a large, circular case
which contained, as the student had frequently remarked, a
magnificent collection of early Egyptian rings and precious stones.
To this the attendant strode, and, unlocking it, threw it open. On
the ledge at the side he placed his lamp, and beside it a small,
earthenware jar which he had drawn from his pocket. He then took
a handful of rings from the case, and with a most serious and
anxious face he proceeded to smear each in turn with some liquid
substance from the earthen pot, holding them to the light as he did
so. He was clearly disappointed with the first lot, for he threw
them petulantly back into the case and drew out some more. One of
these, a massive ring with a large crystal set in it, he seized and
eagerly tested with the contents of the jar.

Instantly he uttered a cry of joy, and threw out his arms in
a wild gesture which upset the pot and set the liquid streaming
across the floor to the very feet of the Englishman. The attendant
drew a red handkerchief from his bosom, and, mopping up the mess,
he followed it into the corner, where in a moment he found himself
face to face with his observer.

"Excuse me," said John Vansittart Smith, with all
imaginable politeness; "I have been unfortunate enough to fall
asleep behind this door."

"And you have been watching me?" the other asked in
English, with a most venomous look on his corpselike face.

The student was a man of veracity. "I confess," said he,
"that I have noticed your movements, and that they have
aroused my curiosity and interest in the highest degree."

The man drew a long, flamboyant-bladed knife from his bosom.
"You have had a very narrow escape," he said; "had
I seen you ten minutes ago, I should have driven this through your
heart. As it is, if you touch me or interfere with me in any way
you are a dead man."

"I have no wish to interfere with you," the student
answered. "My presence here is entirely accidental. All I
ask is that you will have the extreme kindness to show me out
through some side-door." He spoke with great suavity, for the
man was still pressing the tip of his dagger against the palm of
his left hand, as though to assure himself of its sharpness, while
his face preserved its malignant expression.

"If I thought -" said he. "But no, perhaps it is as
well. What is your name?" The Englishman gave it.

"Vansittart Smith," the other repeated. "Are you
the same Vansittart Smith who gave a paper in London upon El Kab?
I saw a report of it. Your knowledge of the subject is
contemptible."

"Sir!" cried the Egyptologist.

"Yet it is superior to that of many who make even greater
pretensions. The whole keystone of our old life in Egypt was not
the inscriptions or monuments of which you make so much, but was
our hermetic philosophy and mystic knowledge of which you say
little or nothing."

"Our old life!" repeated the scholar, wide-eyed; and then
suddenly, "Good God, look at the mummy's face!"

The strange man turned and flashed his light upon the dead
woman, uttering a long, doleful cry as he did so. The action of
the air had already undone all the art of the embalmer. The skin
had fallen away, the eyes had sunk inwards, the discoloured lips
had writhed away from the yellow teeth, and the brown mark upon the
forehead alone showed that it was indeed the same face which had
shown such youth and beauty a few short minutes before.

The man flapped his hands together in grief and horror. Then
mastering himself by a strong effort he turned his hard eyes once
more upon the Englishman.

"It does not matter," he said, in a shaking voice.
"It really does not matter. I came here to-night with
the fixed determination to do something. It is now done.
All else us as nothing. I have found my quest. The old
curse is broken. I can rejoin her. What matter about
her inanimate shell so long as her spirit is awaiting me
at the other side of the veil!"

"These are wild words," said Vansittart Smith. He
was becoming more and more convinced that he had to
do with a madman.

"Time presses, and I must go," continued the other.
"The moment is at hand for which I have waited this
weary time. But I must show you out first. Come with
me."

Taking up the lamp, he turned from the disordered
chamber, and led the student swiftly through the long
series of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian apartments.
At the end of the latter he pushed open a small door let
into the wall and descended a winding, stone stair. The
Englishman felt the cold, fresh air of the night upon his
brow. There was a door opposite him which appeared
to communicate with the street. To the right of this
another door stood ajar, throwing a spurt of yellow light
across the passage. "Come in here!" said the attendant
shortly.

Vansittart Smith hesitated. He had hoped that he had
come to the end of his adventure. Yet his curiosity was
strong within him. He could not leave the matter
unsolved, so he followed his strange companion into the
lighted chamber.

It was a small room, such as is devoted to a concierge.
A wood fire sparkled in the grate. At one side stood a
truckle bed, and at the other a coarse, wooden chair, with
a round table in the centre, which bore the remains of a
meal. As the visitor's eye glanced round he could not
but remark with an ever-recurring thrill that all the small
details of the room were of the most quaint design and
antique workmanship. The candlesticks, the vases upon
the chimney-piece, the fire-irons, the ornaments upon
the walls, were all such as he had been wont to associate
with the remote past. The gnarled, heavy-eyed man
sat himself down upon the edge of the bed, and motioned
his guest into the chair.

"There may be design in this," he said, still speaking
excellent English. "It may be decreed that I should
leave some account behind as a warning to all rash mortals
who would set their wits up against workings of Nature.
I leave it with you. Make such use as you will of it.
I speak to you now with my feet upon the threshold of
the other world.

"I am, as you surmised, an Egyptian--not one of the
down-trodden race of slaves who now inhabit the Delta
of the Nile, but a survivor of that fiercer and harder
people who tamed the Hebrew, drove the Ethiopian
back into the sourthern deserts, and built those mighty
works which have been the envy and the wonder of all
after generations. It was in the reign of Tuthmosis,
sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that I
first saw the light. You shrink away from me. Wait,
and you will see that I am more to be pitied than to
be feared.

"My name was Sosra. My father had been the chief priest of
Osiris in the great temple of abaris, which stood in those days
upon the Bubastic branch of the Nile. I was brought up in the
temple and was trained in all those mystic arts which are spoken of
in your own Bible. I was an apt pupil. Before I was sixteen I had
learned all which the wisest priest could teach me. From that time
on I studied Nature's secrets for myself, and shared my knowledge
with no man.

"Of all the questions which attracted me there were none over
which I laboured so long as over those which concern themselves
with the nature of life. I probed deeply into the vital principle.
The aim of medicine had been to drive away disease when it
appeared. It seemed to me that a method might be devised which
should so fortify the body as to prevent weakness or death from
ever taking hold of it. It is useless that I should recount my
researches. You would scarce comprehend them if I did. They were
carried out partly upon animals, partly upon slaves, and partly on
myself. Suffice it that their result was to furnish me with a
substance which, when injected into the blood, would endow the body
with strength to resist the effects of time, of violence, or of
disease;. It would not indeed confer immortality, but its potency
would endure for many thousands of years. I used it upon a cat,
and afterwards drugged the creature with the most deadly poisons.
That cat is alive in Lower Egypt at the present moment. There was
nothing of mystery or magic in the matter. It was simply a
chemical discovery, which may well be made again.

"Love of life runs high in the young. It seemed to me that I
had broken away from all human care now that I had abolished pain
and driven death to such a distance. With a light heart I poured
the accursed stuff into my veins. Then I looked round for someone
whom I could benefit. There was a young priest of Thoth, Parmes by
name, who had won my goodwill by his earnest nature and his
devotion to his studies. To him I whispered my secret, and at his
request I injected him with my elixir. I should now, I reflected,
never be with out a companion of the same age as myself.

"After this grand discovery I relaxed my studies to some
extent, but Parmes continued his with redoubled energy. Every day
I could see him working with his flasks and his distiller in the
Temple of Thoth, but he said little to me as to the result of his
labours. For my own part, I used to walk through the city and look
around me with exultation as I reflected that all this was destined
to pass away, and that only I should remain. The people would bow
to me as they passed me, for the fame of my knowledge had gone
abroad.

" There was war at this time, and the Great King had sent down
his soldiers to the eastern boundary to drive away the Hyksos. A
Governor, too, was sent to Abaris, that he might hold it for the
King. I had heard much of the beauty of the daughter of this
Governor, but one day as I walked out with Parmes we met her, borne
upon the shoulders of her slaves. I was struck with love as with
lightning. My heart went out from me. I could have thrown myself
beneath the feet of her bearers. This was my woman. Life without
her was impossible. I swore by the head of Horus that she should
be mine. I swore it to the Priest of Thoth. He turned away f rom
me with a brow which was as black as midnight.

There is no need to tell you of our wooing. She came to love
me even as I loved her. I learned that Parmes had seen her before
I did, and had shown her that he, too, lover her, but I could smile
at his passion, for I knew that her heart was mine. The white
plague had come upon the city and many were stricken, but I laid my
hands upon the sick and nursed them without fear or scathe. She
marvelled at my daring. Then I told her my secret, and begged her
that she would let me use my art upon her.

"'Your flower shall then be unwithered, Atma,' I said. 'Other
things may pass away, but you and I, and our great love for each
other, shall outlive the tomb of King Chefru.'

"But she was full of timid, maidenly objections. Was it
right?' she asked, 'was it not a thwarting of the will of the gods?
If the great Osiris had wished that our years should be so long,
would he not himself have brought it about?'

"With fond and loving words I overcame her doubts, and yet she
hesitated. It was a great question, she said. She would think it
over for this one night. In the morning I should know of her
resolution. Surely one night was not too much to ask.

She wished to pray to Isis for help in her decision.

"With a sinking heart and a sad foreboding of evil I left her
with her tirewomen. In the morning, when the early sacrifice was
over, I hurried to her house. A rightened slave met me upon the
steps. Her mistress was ill, she said, very ill. In a frenzy I
broke my way through the attendants, and rushed through hall and
corridor to my Atma's chamber. She lay upon her couch, her head
high upon the pillow, with a pallid face and glazed eye. On her
forehead there blazed a single angry, purple patch. I knew that
hell-mark of old. It was the scar of t he white plague, the
sign-manual of death.

"Why should I speak of that terrible time? For months I was
mad, fevered, delirious, and yet I could not die. Never did an
Arab thirst after the sweet wells as I longed after death. Could
poison or steel have shortened the thread of my existence, I should
soon have rejoined my love in the land with the narrow portal. I
tried, but it was of no avail. The accursed influence was too
strong upon me. One night as I lay upon my couch, weak and weary,
Parmes, the priest of Thoth, came to my chamber. He stood in the
circle of the lamp-light, and he looked down upon me with eyes
which were bright with a mad joy.

" 'Why did you let the maiden die?" he asked; 'why did
you not strengthen her as you strengthened me?'

" 'I was too late,' I answered. 'But I had forgot. You also
loved her. You are my fellow in misfortune. Is it not terrible to
think of the centuries which must pass ere we look upon her again
Fools, fools, that we were to take death to be our enemy!'

" 'You may say that,' he cried with a wild laugh; 'The words
come well from your lips. For me they have no meaning.'

" 'What mean you? I cried, raising myself upon my elbow.
'Surely, friend, this grief has turned your brain.' His face was
aflame with joy, and he writhed and shook like one who hath a
devil.

" 'Do you know whither I go?' he asked.

" 'Nay,' I answered, 'I cannot tell.'

" 'I go to her,' said he. 'she lies embalmed in the farther
tomb by the double palm-tree beyond the city wall.'

" 'Why do you go there?' I cried.

" 'To die!' he shrieked, 'to die! I am not bound by earthen
fetters.'

" 'But the elixir is in your blood,' I cried.

" 'I can defy it,' said he; 'I have found a stronger principle
which will destroy it. It is working in my veins at this moment,
and in an hour I shall be a dead man. I shall join her, and you
shall remain behind.'

"As I looked upon him I could see that he spoke words of
truth. The light in his eye told me that he was indeed beyond the
power of the elixir.

" 'You will teach me!' I cried.

" 'Never!' he answered.

" 'I implore you, by the wisdom of Thoth, by the majesty of
Anubis!'

" 'It is useless,' he said coldly.

" 'Then I will find it out,' I cried.

" 'You cannot,' he answered; 'it came to me by chance. There
is one ingredient which you can never get. Save that which is in
the ring of Thoth, none will ever more be made.'

" 'In the ring of Thoth!' I repeated, 'where then is the ring
of Thoth?'

" 'That also you shall never know,' he answered. 'You won her
love. Who has won in the end? I leave you to your sordid earth
life. My chains are broken. I must go!' He turned upon his heel
and fled from the chamber. In the morning came the news that the
Priest of Thoth was dead.

"My days after that were spent in study. I must find this
subtle poison which was strong enough to undo the elixir. From
early dawn to midnight I bent over the test-tube and the furnace.
Above all, I collected the papyri and the chemical flasks of the
Priest of Thoth. Alas! they taught me little. Here and there some
hint or stray expression would raise hope in my bosom, but no good
ever came of it. Still month after month, I struggled on. When
my heart grew faint I would make my way to the tomb by the
palm-trees. There, standing by the dead casket from which the
jewel had been rifled, I would feel her sweet presence, and would
whisper to her that I would rejoin her if mortal wit could solve
the riddle.

"Parmes had said that his discovery was connected with the
ring of Thoth. I had some remembrance of the trinket. It was a
large and weighty circlet, made, not of gold, but of a rarer and
heavier metal brought from the mines of Mount Harbal. Platinum,
you call it. The ring had, I remembered, a hollow crystal set in
it, in which some few drops of liquid might be stored. Now, the
secret of Parmes could not have to do with the metal alone, for
there were many rings of that metal in the Temple. Was it not more
likely that he had stored his precious poison within the cavity of
the crystal? I had scarce come to this conclusion before, in
hunting through his papers, I came upon one which told me that it
was indeed so, and that there was still some of the liquid unused.

"But how to find the ring? It was not upon him when he was
stripped for the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it
among his private effects. In vain I searched every room that he
had entered, every box and vase and chattel that he had owned. I
sifted the very sand of the desert in places where he had been wont
to walk; but, do what I would, I could come upon no traces of the
ring of Thoth. Yet it may be that my lab ours would have overcome
all obstacles had it not been for a new and unlooked-for
misfortune. "A great war had been waged against the Hyksos,
and the Captains of the Great King had been cut off in the desert,
with all their bowmen and horsemen. The shepherd tribes were upon
us like the locusts in a dry year. From the wilderness of Shur to
the great, bitter lake there was blood by day and fire by night.
Abaris was the bulwark of Egypt, but we could not keep the savages
back. The city fell. The Governor and the soldiers were put to
the sword, and I, with many more was led away into captivity.

"For years and years I tended cattle in the great plains by
the Euphrates. My master died, and his son grew old, but I was
still as far from death as ever. At last I escaped upon a swift
camel, and made my way back to Egypt. The Hyksos had settled in
the land which they had conquered, and their own King ruled over
the country. Abaris had been torn down, the city had been burned,
and the great Temple there was nothing left save an unsightly
mound. Everywhere the tombs had been rifled and the monuments
destroyed. Of my Atma's grave no sign was left. It was buried in
the sands of the desert, and the palm-trees which marked the spot
had long disappeared. The papers of Parmes and the remains of the
Temple of Thoth were either destroyed or scattered far and wide
over the deserts of Syria. All search after them was vain.

"From that time I gave up all hope of ever finding the ring or
discovering the subtle drug. I set myself to live as patiently as
might be until the effect of the elixir should wear away. How can
you understand how terrible a thing time is, you who have
experience only of the narrow course which lies between the cradle
and the grave! I know it to my cost, I who have floated down the
whole stream of history. I was old when ilium fell. I was very
old when Herodotus came to Memphis. I was bowed down with years
when the new gospel came upon earth. Yet you see me much as other
men are, with the cursed elixir still sweetening my blood, and
guarding me against that which I would court. Now, at last, at
last I have come to the end of it!

"I have travelled in all lands and I have dwelt with all
nations. Every tongue is the same to me. I learned them all to
help pass the weary time. I need not tell you how slowly they
drifted by, the long dawn of modern civilization, the dreary middle
years, the dark times of barbarism. They are all behind me now.
I have never looked with the eyes of love upon another woman.
Atma knows that I have been constant to her.

"It was my custom to read all that the scholars had to say
upon Ancient Egypt. I have been in many positions, sometimes
affluent, sometimes poor, but I have always found enough to enable
me to buy the journals which deal with such matters. Some nine
months ago I was in San Francisco, when I read an account of some
discoveries made in the neighbourhood of Abaris. My heart leapt
into my mouth as I read it. It said that the excavator had busied
himself in exploring some tombs recently unearth. In one there had
been found an unopened mummy with an inscription upon the outer
case setting forth that it contained the body of the daughter of
the Governor of the city in the days of Tuthmosis. It added that
on removing the outer case there had been exposed a large platinum
ring set with a crystal, which had been laid upon the breast of the
embalmed woman. This, then, was where Parmes had hid the ring of
Thoth. He might well say that it was safe, for no Egyptian would
ever stain his soul by moving even the outer case of a buried
friend.

"That very night I set off from San Francisco, and in a few
weeks I found myself once more at Abaris, if a few sand-heaps and
crumbling walls may retain the name of the great city. I hurried
to the Frenchmen who were digging there and asked them for the
ring. They replied that both the ring and the mummy had been sent
to the Boulak Museum at Cairo. To Boulak I went, but only to be
told that Mariette Bey had claimed them and had shipped them to the
Louvre. I followed them, and there, at last, in the Egyptian
chamber, I came, after close upon four thousand years, upon the
remains of my Atma, and upon the ring for which I had sought so
long.

"But how was I to lay hands upon them? How was I to have them
for my very own? It chanced that the office of attendant was
vacant. I went to the Director. I convinced him that I knew much
about Egypt. In my eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a
Professor's chair would suit me better than a seat in the
conciergerie. I knew more, he said, than he did. It was only by
blundering, and letting him think that he had over-estimated my
knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me move the few
effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my first
and my last night here.

"Such is my story, Mr. Vansittart Smith. I need not say more
to a man of your perception. By a strange chance you have this
night looked upon the face of the woman whom I loved in those
far-off days. There were many rings with crystals in the case, and
I had to test for the platinum to be sure of the one which I
wanted. A glance at the crystal has shown me that the liquid is
indeed within it, and that I shall at last be able to shake off
that accursed health which has been worse to me than the foulest
disease. I have nothing more to say to you. I have unburdened
myself. You may tell my story or you may withhold it at your
pleasure. The choice rests with you. I owe you some amends, for
you have had a narrow escape of your life this night. I was a
desperate man, and not to be balked in my purpose. Had I seen you
before the thing was done, I might have put it beyond your power to
oppose me or. to raise an alarm. This is the door. It leads into
the Rue de Rivoli. Good night."

The Englishman glanced back. For a moment the lean figure of
Sosra the Egyptian stood framed in the narrow doorway. The next
the door had slammed, and the heavy rasping of the bolt broke on
the silent night.

It was on the second day after his return to London that Mr.
John Vansittart Smith saw the following concise narrative in the
Paris correspondence of The Times: - "Curious Occurrence in
the Louvre. - Yesterday morning a strange discovery was made in the
principal Eastern chamber. The ouvriers who are employed to clean
out the rooms in the morning found one of the attendants laying
dead upon the floor with his arms found one of the mummies. So
close was his embrace that it was only with the utmost difficulty
that they were separated.

One of the cases containing valuable rings had been opened and
rifled. The authorities are of opinion that the man was bearing
away the mummy with some idea of selling it to a private collector,
but that he was struck down in the very act by long-standing
disease of the heart. It is said that he was a man of uncertain
age and eccentric habits, without any living relations to mourn
over his dramatic and untimely end."